Dell laptop

Hey everyone,
my girlfriend really wants to buy one of those cheap 300$ dell laptops and i have tried my best to stray her away from them.

I have seen used macbook duo's for around 500$ used.
She needs to use Arcview and so it has to be an intel to run parallels or other emulator.

I don't want a PC.
I hate fixing them.
Are those dell's crap?

How functional is a macbook with emulator?

thanks,
mike

mikeassk wrote in post #7233934
I don't want a PC.
I hate fixing them.
Are those dell's crap?

Then don't buy a cheap low quality one

Nothing wrong with a $300 laptop from Dell (I assume you mean the new Inspidon Mini range?). Nothing particulary good about it either, but if is prepared to get what she pays for, and is happy with it working for 18 months - 2 years then go for it.

However a Mac Duo will be a better spec, better built machine, and if you can get a used one for not much more than the Dell, then a much, much better buy.

If your wary of running XP or Vista on it, then you could look at getting a higher spec Laptop for HP, Dell, etc second hand.

All you need to do is convince her to spend the extra couple of hundred.

I had both an xps m1210 and hp dv5t (2.53 4gb) and never again will I buy a pc after having a macbook...the days of reformatting and crashes are over for me...the extra money is well worth it...

I've had one of the midrange Dell laptops before and honestly it was utter crap. I had to get it repaired 3 times and it never quite worked right, it wasn't reliable at all. I also had an iBook at the same time as the Dell and it worked great and didn't have a single glitch and got the same treatment. I would never buy another Dell, a couple of my friends have had Dells before and they had similar experiences. (One had the hinge break and the screen literally fell off, Dell called that normal wear and tear and he had the expensive extended warranty) Since then all of us have Macs and haven't had problems at all.

I have a $1500 Dell laptop on loan from my college for this semester and it's awful. The hardware is ok but the casing is so cheap feeling and the second day half the keyboard popped out along with a plastic bit off the side.

I would suggest HP over dell just because of the customer service...DELL is terrible...

Ultimate CC wrote in post #7234547
I would suggest HP over dell just because of the customer service...DELL is terrible...

i had an error with my screen - had red lines appearing, next day an engineer came and swapped it..

is that for dell or hp? When I had my HP the service was amazingly fast...the dell was hours of waiting on the phone...

Calling Dell can suck but I love my E1405. I've had it almost 3 years. Heck, my family has had some killer issues with HP lately so I can say their customer service is terrible. That's all speculative.

Depending on the specs depends on how good it is...for the most part. ANd everyone parading around Macs realize they are white PCs, right? Unless you like the OS which you can get linux for free which is better but doesn't have as much support so run Windows and Linux. It's becoming popular.

Ultimate CC wrote in post #7234547
I would suggest HP over dell just because of the customer service...DELL is terrible...

I've had better luck with Dell support than HP, so there ya go.

I think it's the price range rather than the brand of laptop. If you buy a low end laptop, well, then, that's what you have

IMO, Dell has the best customer service. I have never had an issue with them.

^ Well its just that,
I have never had to call apple.
I dont know about their customer service.

Ultimate CC wrote in post #7234811
is that for dell or hp? When I had my HP the service was amazingly fast...the dell was hours of waiting on the phone...

Dell, i called them and was off the phone within 5 minutes..

i spent a little more on the HP LP2475w i just bought, got 4 years next business day support for an extra £14

I recommend Dell to all the non-computer-savvy people who ask me what to buy, purely because I now they won't get ripped off and will get dealt with properly by Dell customer service/tech support and they won't need to pester me again.